The administration of Mayor Denis Coderre says it’s ready to compromise on its plan to install granite sculptures that double as seats around Mount Royal for the city’s 375th anniversary next year.

But, it adds, it won’t withdraw the project for the $3.45-million objects, which critics have said look like granite tree stumps.

“We’re ready to make changes to the project,” city executive committee member Réal Ménard, who is responsible for Mount Royal and who has defended the project, told the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday.

He also confirmed the city has been “in contact” with the Quebec Culture Department, which has the final say on the project since it’s destined for the provincially-protected Mount Royal Natural and Historic District.

Ménard said he met with Les amis de la montagne, a non-profit organization that aims to preserve Mount Royal, for three hours last week to discuss the project and is set to meet with the group again on Wednesday.

“We’re very open to their suggestions,” he said, such as changing the planned locations of the granite pieces. The number of pieces “could be” re-examined as well, he said.

“If there are … places where they don’t want us to put the rest stops, we’re completely ready to look at it,” Ménard said.

“If Les amis de la montagne tells us ‘Near the Smith House or near Beaver Lake, we’d prefer there were no rest stops’, we’re open to it.”

“We’re convinced that Montrealers will appreciate the project,” Ménard said.

Artist rendering of granite tree stumps planned for installation on Mount Royal as part of Montreal’s 375th anniversary.

In a statement last week, Les amis de la montagne said it had expressed reservations during 15 meetings with city officials as the project was evolving. It expressed concerns about “the concept, design choices, and the apparent absence of consideration for maintenance of the installations,” the group said. Les amis also said it suggested the city use local materials instead of granite, such as gabbro, hornfels or limestone.

However, Ménard said the material will remain granite.

A $3.45-million contract to supply and install the objects, described in a city report as “a cross between street furniture, signage and design,” was awarded to Aménagement Côté Jardin Inc. by a majority vote of the Montreal city council and the island council in May, even though opposition party Projet Montréal and the island suburbs opposed it.

The contract is 27 per cent above the city’s estimate. The principal factor explaining the price difference is the granite, which the city says is on average 43 per cent higher in the winning bid than the going market price.

The contract is part of a larger project called “Escales découvertes” (“Discovery Stops”), which has an $8.26-million budget and is one of several “legacy” projects for Montreal’s 375th anniversary. The city says the project aims to better link Mount Royal’s three summits and make the mountain more accessible.

However, the city of Westmount, where one of the summits is located, refused the granite stumps.

It turns out the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, on the slopes of Mount Royal, also refused the granite stumps.

“Of course we refused it,” Yoland Tremblay, executive director of the cemetery, told the Montreal Gazette this week, referring to the stumps. The cemetery refused them a while ago, he said.

However, he said the cemetery accepted a compromise offered by the city to install “five or six” low pieces of granite that tuck into the landscape and are “not at all like what’s to be in Mount Royal Park.” Tremblay said he finds them more pleasing than the stumps, which he described as “gigantic and we see them a lot.”

Since the granite stumps project came to light, critics have demanded the Coderre administration abandon it.

The latest voice is from Fédération Écomusée de l’Au-Delà, a cemetery heritage group, that’s calling the city’s 375th anniversary plans for the mountain “a fiasco.”

The organization is calling on Coderre to withdraw Escales découvertes and hold a public consultation next year to pick projects that would honour Montreal’s 375 years of history and provide a lasting legacy, Alain Tremblay, executive director of Fédération Écomusée de l’Au-Delà, said. He’s no relation to the cemetery’s Yoland Tremblay.

Fédération Écomusée de l’Au-Delà and Les amis de la montagne were among several groups that were invited to be part of a working group formed by the city five years ago to consult on projects for the 375th anniversary, Alain Tremblay said.

However, Escales découvertes, was “a project developed by bureaucrats” and the groups were treated like “spectators,” even though they raised objections to it, he said.

His group launched a petition on its own in 2013 to have the city recognize Côte-des-Neiges Rd. as a historical route for the 375th anniversary.

Montreal city council unanimously passed such a declaration later that year.

But while the city plans to hang signs on lamp posts along the street with information about its history for the anniversary, Alain Tremblay said there’s no master plan or vision to recognize the role Côte-des-Neiges played in Montreal’s development.

There’s no harm if legacy projects don’t take shape until after 2017, he said. After all, he said, it was only in 1895 that Montreal installed the famous Maisonneuve monument in Place d’Armes featuring a statue of Paul de Chomedey, the first governor of Ville-Marie, for the city’s 250th anniversary – three years earlier.

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